1984 revisited

  Imagine being diagnosed with cancer. They tell you you need chemotherapy.  You check the side-effects of chemotherapy and decide they are too severe for you to risk. You tell your doctor you don’t want the treatment, but they say you will have chemotherapy whether you like it or not, or you wont be able to access Healthcare. They claim without chemotherapy you might die and, if necessary, you will be kept locked up in hospital to make sure you get it. Fortunately, this could never happen in Australia. When it comes to illnesses – such as cancer, heart disease or appendicitis – the law does not allow a doctor to force patients into treatment they competently refuse. If you understand what is involved and can weigh up the risks and benefits of your choice, you can refuse medical treatment even if you could die as a result. People competently refuse chemotherapy, renal dialysis or operations quite often. They may do so for any any number of reasons, such as not agreeing with th...

  How quickly things have changed My wife is a aged care worker .  She works the night shift and looks after 34 Dimentia residents each night.  They are supposed to have a worker to help share the workload, however often they do not have the staff to cover this.a Now they have around 8 staff who have made the choice  not to get a vaccination and on September 16 these will no longer have employment thanks to the Government. We have now heard because of the staffing crisis in healthcare that the government a crisis the government has created, they are now trying to get staff from overseas to fill positions here. So the government has put rules in place to try and force people to be vaccinated.  Staff have refused to be forced to get the vaccinations and will lose their jobs because of the government’s edict on vaccinations.  And now the governments solution is to bring overseas workers to fill the void? Staff in these residential care facilities are not high ...

  Our ANZAC day marches are sadly now seeing Vietnam Veterans as the senior forces marching, however, let’s not forget these returned soldiers were not welcomed home for around 20 years, due to the disgraceful attack by socialist activists on the Vietnam war and anyone playing a part in it.  Remember most of these Vets were conscripted with no choice and still they did Australia proud.w DENNIS Everitt returned from the Vietnam War in 1969 as a 22-year-old. But it wasn’t until 1987, when Australia decided to ‘welcome home’ its forgotten soldiers, that Mr Everitt, was 69 in 2016, and was the senior vice president of the Waverley RSL sub-branch, felt he could lift the shackles of what remains our most controversial war. “We didn’t admit we had been to Vietnam,’’ he said. “The worst part was we were even told not to get around in our uniform and you thought ‘God, how long are going to have to hide like this?’’ The answer?  Almost 20 years. “That return march really opened the...

 Canberra tent embassy founder, Michael Anderson, wants Aboriginal people from across Australia to use the city’s Anzac Day march to protest against the massacres committed during the ‘frontier wars’.   Mr Anderson is one of the founders of the ‘tent embassy’ and a leading Aboriginal rights activist.  He lives on and runs a sheep and cattle property on his ancestral lands on both sides of the New South Wales and Queensland border in the lower Ballone river system. ‘‘Our country was taken by superior force at gunpoint,’’ he said. ‘‘Blood has been spilt on the wattle and this war of attrition against Aboriginal people is continuing.’’ Mr Anderson said a well supported ‘‘Lest We Forget The Frontier Wars March’’ had joined on behind the Anzac Day March in Canberra last year. ‘We received enormous support from the public at the time, now we intend to keep it growing.’’ He has urged Aborigines who cannot travel to Canberra to stage similar protests at Anzac commemorations in th...

The virus emerged in China in the winter of 1957 and spread rapidly worldwide via ships, aeroplanes, and trains. In April, it sparked a major epidemic in Hong Kong, where about 250 000 people were infected, and by June India had seen over a million cases. Shortly afterwards, it made landfall in the UK, and by September outbreaks were being reported in England, Wales, and Scotland. General practitioners were “amazed at the extraordinary infectivity of the disease” and the suddenness with which it attacked younger age groups. Yet, while some members of the College of General Practitioners called for the UK Government to issue a warning about the dangers presented by the virus and coordinate a national response, the ministry of health demurred. Instead, the virus was permitted to run its course. The 1957 outbreak was not caused by a coronavirus—the first human coronavirus would not be discovered until 1965—but by an influenza virus. However, in 1957, no one could be sure that the virus th...